


Badge Work

by fadeverb



Series: Leo [24]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-02
Updated: 2013-10-02
Packaged: 2017-12-28 04:56:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/987929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luna finds out that even in Heaven, there are disagreements to be had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Badge Work

Because Judgment had not thought to send her waterproof paperwork, Luna was sitting in the dry part of the office when the door light turned on. "I've got it," she called down to the depths, where Vaina was doing something with a saw and pine log. When her Cherub waved a foot in acknowledgment (his two hands, tail, and other foot being busy with holding the log and saw in place) she set the paperwork aside and opened the door. "Hello, Johannes. More badge work?"

"Not today," the reliever said, as he wafted inside on pearlescent wings. Instead of a clipboard, he carried a card stamped with the sigil of Trade. "Do you have an hour free?"

"Definitely," Luna said. "I was just filling out more Judgment paperwork to request some of the law commentaries." She had been somewhat disappointed to find that the laws of Heaven fit into a single slim volume, which the Mercurian of the visiting triad had offered her on their second visit. ("To keep as long as you'd like," the Mercurian had said, "since I can always have another copy made. Or you could have your own copy bound up and personalized, if you'd like...") That disappointed had faded when she realized the simple, direct laws implied a near infinite number of peculiar corner cases, and that volumes--shelves of volumes! entire rooms!--of commentary had been written on the subject.

"Are you thinking of asking them for work?" Johannes asked, tapping the card thoughtfully against his other hand. He was hovering far enough above the floor to look Luna directly in the eyes, at least when she was facing him and not tidying up her paperwork.

"Probably not, since they don't contract much, and it looks like I'd need to do years and years and _years_ of training before I could join a triad, even if they did want to take me," Luna said. "Though I haven't crossed them off the list. Half a second." She knelt down at the edge of the water, and ducked her head under the surface. "Vaina, I'm going out with Johannes for an hour or so. Want me to pick up anything for you on the way back?"

"Would you check with the power tools tent run by that one Malakite of Creation, and see if she has any chainsaws that can run when completely submerged?"

"Sure," she said. "And if she doesn't, I'll drop a note into the suggestion box at the Lightning stall." She pulled her head back up, and shook it vigorously to get the water out of her hair. "Okay, I'm ready. Where are we going?"

Johannes held up the card. "I finished my badge sequence," he said, "and made an appointment, and now Lord Marc will be giving me my ninth Force. The card said 'and guest', and..." He hesitated, and she remembered that she ought to be more careful about her expressions. "You don't have to come, but I'd like you to."

"What about your Forceparent?" Luna asked, wrapping her arms around herself. Archangels were...vast and terrifying and _nothing_ like Princes, nothing at all, but she couldn't imagine just making an appointment with one. Walking into their office. (Did Archangels even have offices? Presumably the whole Bazaar was Marc's office, if he wanted it to be.) "Shouldn't they be with you?"

"I would have asked them," Johannes said, "but they're on Earth, doing important work." He settled down to his feet, and looked up at her. "Would you come? As a favor for me."

"Of course I'll come," Luna said quickly, as if she had never had the slightest hesitation. Because there was no reason to hesitate. "I'm not sure I'm dressed right for it, though. I keep meaning to buy shoes..."

"You'll be fine," Johannes said, and smiled at her. His smiles were rare, and thus always meaningful. He gave them out the way Vaina gave away finished carvings, casually and infrequently and without any need for repayment. Though Luna always smiled back nevertheless. Not payment, but reciprocation. That was part of Trade.

#

The Archangel had a secretary, another Mercurian, who glanced at Johannes' card and indicated seats by the window where they could wait until their appointment. _That_ Mercurian was dressed gloriously, if in a style that Luna didn't recognize: he wore long black robes with enormous sleeves, and a panel across the front of his robe had two birds in flight embroidered in with shining white thread. Luna sat beside Johannes, swinging her feet beneath the seat, and tried to study that outfit surreptitiously. She didn't much like the hat, but that embroidery was _something_.

Some days she was very glad she'd been made an Impudite, and thus became a Mercurian. Some of the other Choirs had so few options for fashion. (She hadn't made any real fashion choices since she arrived, but the options existed.) Mercurians and Malakim seemed to get all the good clothes, and it wasn't as if she could've started off something else and become a Malakite. Elohim had the option of interesting clothing, but most of them didn't bother.

"I wonder," Johannes said quietly, "what it feels like."

"To get another Force?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I've earned a new Force before, when I completed my first badge sequence. The others came on their own, which feels a bit different. Slower. I was wondering what it feels like to fledge."

"I don't know," Luna said. "I've always been this--" She hesitated over the word. "Well, I don't know. Have you asked anyone else what it felt like?"

"I asked an Elohite," Johannes said, "and it told me that it felt 'appropriate', which I'm sure is true, but that wasn't very useful." His feet swung beneath his seat in turn, in time with hers. "Even though I know what I came here for, and that I want it, and that it's right and true, there's a part of me that wants to put it off until later. Until I'm more ready. Is this what being scared feels like?"

_That's what walking up to redemption feels like,_ Luna thought, and she took his hand, wrapped her fingers between his. "Probably," she said. "Do you really want to reschedule? Because I'm sure he'll let you, if you'd rather wait."

"No," Johannes said. "Yes I want to, and no I won't, because the wanting isn't the point. This is what I should do. But it is useful for me to know that I'm afraid, so that I can..." His fingers tightened against hers. "So that I can remind myself why not to be. It's only that it's such a big step. Right now, I could become anything. Once this is over, I'll only ever be one thing."

Which wasn't exactly true, because there was one other thing for an angel to become, Malakim excepted. Luna squeezed his hand back, and said, "That's not so bad, either. To be exactly who you are."

And it was time for his appointment.

#

The Archangel's office was enormous, which seemed appropriate. Even though they had entered through the big waiting room, all four walls of the office were glass showing the whole of the Bazaar, as if they were in the exact center. His desk was also impressive, but he wasn't sitting behind it. The Archangel of Trade, a being of cosmic power and ineffable purposes, dressed so perfectly as to make _any_ Mercurian understand how important he was, stood in the center of the office, and walked right up to them when they entered. Lord Marc offered both his hands out, and took the reliever's offered hands in turn. "Johannes. Excellent work with the badges. Cyril sends along their best wishes, and apologies that they can't be here for this."

"I know they're busy," Johannes said, and blushed faintly. "Thank you."

Marc put a hand to the reliever's shoulder. "It's my pleasure." And he smiled at _her_ , right like that. "It's good to see you again, Luna. Thank you for coming along. Moral support is important in times of change and decision-making."

Luna squeaked out--something. She wasn't sure what. But it must've been good enough, because the Archangel only nodded to that, and turned back to Johannes.

"Are you ready?"

"I don't feel ready," Johannes said, in a small voice. "But this is the right time anyway."

"Oh, kid," Marc said, "that's true so often. The world's imperfect, and we have to do our best with what's there, not the perfect time and perfect response that we might like. Fledging gives you more ways to change the world for the better, and more responsibility to do so. It's harder than being a child. You could train for centuries and never be entirely ready." He chucked Johannes under the chin. "But you're right. This _is_ the right time. Now."

The air shone brighter around Marc, silver and gold and the whirling of numbers across computer screens, copper and heavy stone and rustling paper, the weight of commerce. Underlying it was something older and deeper: clasped hands and blood mingling with blood, a sense of _promises_ that ran back further than any physical or counted expression of what exactly a promise meant.

"Johannes, child of Cyril and child of mine," Marc said, in a friendly ordinary voice that was that and all of Trade behind it too, "do you wish to become a Servitor of Trade, to serve my Word as if it were your own, and to the best of your ability perform the work I set before you, until all accounts have been settled and the world becomes new?"

"I do, my Lord," Johannes said, bending a knee as he floated up from the floor.

Marc licked his thumb, and pressed it to the center of the reliever's forehead. "Then you will be my angel, and I will be your Archangel," he said.

Luna could not see, exactly, how the change happened. Because Johannes was himself, and then...he was still himself, but different. Taller and more sure, though she had always thought he was perfectly confident before. His eyes were enormous and jade green, his wings gone, his skin smoother and his body more in-between the male-or-female that most Mercurians chose.

"Remember," Marc said to him quietly, though not so quietly Luna felt she ought not be listening, "that in many situations there is more than one best choice, and to not act is, itself, a choice and action. Do your best. I have faith in you." He set a sphere of silvery glass, as Luna had once imagined all of Heaven to be, in Johannes' hands. A warm light flared up in its center as it touched the Elohite's palms.

Luna looked at the Heart in her friend's hands, and wondered what it would be like to have one like it, calling her back home, and telling her who she really was. How she ought to behave, what she was part of. And what it must be like for Vaina, to have a quiet, dull Heart that spoke to him of a home that had been emptied while he slept, of being part of something that no longer existed.

The Archangel looked at her, directly at her, and said, "Luna. Thank you for helping Johannes out with this."

"I only--" She stopped before she could say _it was nothing_ because it was, in fact, something. "I was happy to," she said. "And it's only fair, since he's helped me so much."

"Yes," Marc said, and his smile was brilliant. "I rather thought so. Have you settled on a Word yet, or are you still thinking that through?"

"Still thinking about it," Luna said. She could have a normal conversation. If that's what he wanted. And it seemed like he did, and like Johannes didn't mind at all that she was having this conversation when it was really _his_ appointment. "I've--marked a lot of Words off my list? It's only that I can't--I don't--it seems so big. To swear like that. Forever."

"It is big," Marc said. "And we usually don't even ask that out of angels of your size. Though sometimes we ask it out of people even younger than you, when we make angels directly. You might consider that a goal, if you'd like some more structure. Figure out what you want by the time you have nine Forces."

Luna nodded, and didn't ask questions, because it seemed rude.

But Archangels _knew_ when you had questions, and sometimes they even knew what the questions were. "You could speak with the Fledging Coordinator," Marc said. "Pick up a list of assignments, and work through the badge sequence. They have a modified version for young angels. But it's your call."

"I think I would like that," Luna said.

#

She got back to Vaina's room much more than hour after she'd left. There had been so much to _do_ , from helping Johannes decide where to spend his new housing credit, to picking up her clipboard from a chatty Kyriotate holding individual conversations with her and six relievers at once, and then she'd been almost home when she remembered what her Cherub had asked for, and ran back to check on the procurement of underwater-capable chainsaws. (The Malakite didn't have any, but promised to ask with a friend over in Lightning.)

"I'm sorry I'm late," she said, because he was waiting up in the dry part of the office, which he never did when he wasn't...unhappy. She didn't have to be an Elohite to know that unhappiness was still possible in Heaven. She wrapped her arms around him, and accepted the embrace in return.

"I knew you were safe," he said, and his tail twined around her ankle. "You can spend as much time with your friends as you like."

"Yes, but you still worried. I should've let you know I'd be out longer."

"I knew you were safe," he said again, and she realized in that moment that the problem was he _knew_ , but he didn't _believe_.

#

Luna lay on her back on the floor of Johannes' new tent, contemplating the sweep and flow of the fabric that made up its roof. She had expected he would take a room, like most of the Traders she'd met in their home and work spaces, but Johannes had spent his credit on silk tent perched in a structure that spiraled itself up in a single leisurely path, with individual tents perched regularly along its edges. In a place like Hell, or maybe even the corporeal, the tents above would have shaded those below, until those at the bottom sat in a gloomy smudge of darkness. Here the sunlight was as bright in its play along the rippling ceiling as the tent's owner wanted it to be, and she felt almost underwater again to have the light's warmth soaking through a delicate fabric--jade green, like Johannes' eyes, bearing a pattern so subtle she hadn't made out the details yet--to fall across her bare arms and knees.

The Elohite's Heart sat in a cedar chest, half-buried in more fabric and the lid standing open. That had been a present from his Forceparent, delivered so quickly after he settled on a residence that someone must have been waiting for that moment.

"I feel," Luna said, "like I ought to be able to fix this. But there's no _fixing_ that an Archangel died and all their Word shattered around them, or that thousands of years have passed. Do you think Judgment has a better answer for this sort of feeling? When something has gone horribly wrong, and...they must deal with that all the time."

"I'm not sure," Johannes said. He sat like he always had as a reliever, sitting back on his heels, hands on his knees. He'd found a new tunic for his new form, this one unbleached linen belted with the same. It seemed right that as he became more pure and sleek and pale, his clothing ought to become even simpler and rougher. "Judgment can tell you that the death of Oannes was the crime of Belial, but anyone could tell you that much. Or that Vephar bears some responsibility, for fighting with Water before, but Vephar has been dead for even longer. You can't demand restitution from the dead."

"The further I get from danger," Luna said, "the scarier that kind of finality is. The idea that anyone could just...stop being. Like that. Even an Archangel. More than _one_ Archangel, even. Vaina talks about Knowledge, sometimes, when he tells me stories about his past. And she's gone too, and she was even older."

"It's terrible to contemplate," Johannes said. "In this case, I'm not sure it's even useful for you to think about it at length. Start smaller." 

She stretched her arms up, and wiggled her fingers in the sunlight. "I don't know where to start. That's an entire Word gone, and everyone working for it transferred to someone else by now. Except for the people who died, or even Fell."

"When you're not sure where to start," Johannes said, his words inflected to indicate he was quoting someone, "start at the beginning." He leaned forward, and tapped a finger on her clipboard. "And you can start on these, while you're deciding where the beginning is."

"Oh, right." She pushed herself upright. That took more effort in air than it did underwater, or a fraction of thought to tell the local gravity she didn't want its influence. But she didn't mind gravity; having an up and down, a tendency to settle towards where most people spent there time, was good. Solid.

Solid like Vaina was for her. 

She offered a hand over to Johannes, and smiled. "Go ahead. Resonate me."

#

Some of the simpler badges took minutes. Or short, easy hours. Several she could do from Vaina's office, or sitting on the end of a pier while he mapped the floor of a tiny lake he'd chosen at the edge of Jordi's Savannah. That was where she finished her report on Heavenly law, which was trivial; she already had the book. 

"Vaina," she said, when he clambered out of the water onto the pier, "where would I go for information about specific angels?"

"Research?" he asked, and she nodded. "Usually to the Word they belong to. Different Words keep very different sorts of records. More generally... Destiny, I suppose? Or Judgment. They're the ones who keep the best records, and are most likely to keep records on people from other Words. Or maybe Trade, but only if the angels dealt with them in some way. They keep records of contracts."

She jotted down a note in the paper she kept on the clipboard for her own plans. Things that weren't exactly part of the badges. "Thanks."

"I'm surprised they didn't give you a tablet," Vaina said, considering the tools he'd laid out on the pier. "I mean, the modern sort, not the stone or wax kind."

"They said it was traditional. The tablet's an option, but apparently the clipboard's good practice for tracking multiple physical objects. I guess that's important for relievers who aren't used to carrying more than one thing at a time." Luna covered that sheet of paper with one holding her next set of badge requirements. "Though I'm heading over to the Grove next, to talk to someone in War. Want any Essence for the job, while I'm gone? I might not be back before true dawn, and I'm full up."

"One wouldn't go amiss," Vaina said, and they pressed palms together for the transfer. "Thank you. I do need to make some final decisions on this plan, soon. Do you have your heart set on saltwater fish?"

"Salt or fresh, either way," Luna said. "I suppose it depends on where we get approval for building, right?" She handed Vaina the water resistant laser measure, which wasn't exactly the same as waterproof. "I never saw a fish before I got to Heaven, so I don't have strong opinions there."

"So long as you don't want to replicate an estuary exactly, we shouldn't have any trouble acquiring a permit." Vaina kissed her on the forehead, and then winged into the air, measure clasped in his tail. "Would you be up for some Song practice when you get back from War?"

"Unless I somehow use up all my Essence while I'm there, definitely." Luna spread her own wings, and let the feathers soak in the hazy sunlight of this edge of the Savannah. "I'll send a message if I'll be more than a few hours."

She flew in a lazy arc towards the Grove, up towards one of the reliever clouds to watch them play (which she still didn't quite understand, but it didn't bother her anymore to not understand it), and then down towards the treetops as she reached the space where tall grasses and plains turned into forest. A trio of fiery rings whipped around her in a sudden cyclone, and then were gone again before she could say hello or ask nicely that they not _do_ that.

It wasn't frightening. Exactly. Startling, more like. Closer than she quite wanted strangers to come without asking. But that was the way Wind did things, pushing boundaries and playing along the edges of what should and shouldn't be. Showing people how to change, or at least making them wonder if they ought to. She didn't like them much, not when there were _better_ ways to bring about change. But Vaina was fond of the Word, and Johannes admired them, so they deserved some respect from her. Even if she was sure she'd never want to bind to that.

Two solemn relievers sprang up before her when she set feet to ground in the Grove proper. "May we know your Word and business?" asked one.

"I'm completing badges for Trade," Luna said, and showed off her clipboard. "Do you know if Riccarda is here? I wanted to ask her a favor. She's a Seraph, black with red diamonds."

"I know her!" piped up the other reliever. "She's a Vassal. She's usually in Heaven. She's on border duty a lot. She likes that border duty. She once said that if people couldn't keep their Word prejudices to themselves when they were greeting visitors then they ought to at least wear a big sign that said hello my name is insert name here and I'm not capable of--" It hushed as the other reliever tapped it sternly on the shoulder.

"We will send you a guide to her current location," said the older reliever. "Go in strength, Intercessionist."

Luna bowed to the relievers. "Thank you, Helpers," she said, and kept her face straight.

The third reliever, assigned to her as guide, was a silent creature about the height Johannes was right before he fledged. But this reliever said nothing, and barely looked like a reliever anymore; its wings crackled with red sparks and its body was a column of silently whirling flames, the human-like shape of a reliever barely more than an outline of heat-glimmer around that spiral. Surely an Ofanite-to-be, then, and Luna kept her shoulders back, eyes ahead, and followed it as if it was...yes. Only a reliever that was nearly an Ofanite, and Ofanim weren't _really_ fire, but something that looked like it. The way Mercurians weren't human, but looked like them.

She still didn't much like being circled by Wheels. She still would have liked another guide.

The reliever led her to a tree with a trunk as wide as the entire spiral that held Johannes' tent, then around it to a space larger than Vaina's office, its walls made of the tree trunk and two enormous curling roots. Riccarda lay coiled about one of those roots--it was so large that even she could only give it one full loop, and let her head hang low from there--while a half dozen other angels stood about in conversation. Two more Seraphim in shades of red, a Malakite leaning against the flank of a bull-shaped Cherub, and one Mercurian who stood out not _only_ for being that rare creature, a Mercurian of War. 

He was also...well. Luna liked clothing, she loved what it _said_ about people, and she wasn't sure what a Mercurian was saying when he wore soft leather pants, high combat boots, and then a gun holster slung across his bare chest. But she had to admit, he pulled it off very well. Maybe that was standard for Mercurians of War. She wouldn't _mind_ it being standard.

A Cherub much smaller than the one in that conversation dropped down in front of Luna and her guide, wings almost a blur of rapid winging. "Hey hey hey," said the red and white creature, and Luna could even remember the name of the species it was modeled after. A fox, with bright black eyes. "Whole bunch of Vassals over there, having a nice chit-chat, not a good time to bother them. Officers are busy busy, you think they get to talk any old day? Want a race? Or a fight, I could show you a fight." It made little punching motions with its front paws, bushy tail sweeping back and forth below it. "You and me! Fair and square! Vessel combat, good practice, no real risk, you'll learn a lot. Want to? Huh?"

"Thank you, and maybe," Luna said, "but I wanted to speak with Riccarda. Could I leave a message, if it's a bad time?"

Then Riccarda's head swung in her direction, and the Seraph called over, "Don't let them scare you off, small fry. It's no big planning meeting we're in here." She slithered down from her root, coiled for a moment in the air, and then darted in so fast that the fox-Cherub puffed up, fur and feathers both, in surprise. "I have so much dignity I'm soaking it," she said, words underlaid cheerfully with the language of metaphor, "and I don't need anyone else trying to keep me in that soggy puddle. Bug off, Guardian."

The fox stuck its tongue out at her. "Just letting her know! Gets awkward, walking into the middle of a pack of you ranking types, with laser beam resonances hitting you from all directions." It whisked away upward, vanished in an instant between beams of sunlight that made pillars out of dust motes in the air.

"Some people care too much about rank," Riccarda said, and Luna loved the precise weight of the Seraph's words. In the language of Heaven, that could be stated as a general expression of personal opinion; this Warrior cared to weight it as observed fact, generalized but not universal, subjective and yet nailed into place with truth. "What brings you around today? More big questions?"

Luna flipped her clipboard around to show Riccarda the badge requirement, the instructions taking up the top of an otherwise empty sheet of paper where she could fill out her report on the results. _Ask someone serving another Word for training in a skill relevant to that Word. Offer a reasonable payment for their time and effort._ "Would you help me learn self-defense?"

She had thought about the phrasing of that for a while. Most of her first attempts at writing up a request to give had been--too long. Too apologetic. Too full of "if you have the time" and "if it's not too much bother" and "since you once said that I ought to ask someone" and "since I already know you" and, well. That wasn't necessary, was it? All she had to do was _ask_ , and if the Seraph said no, she could ask someone else. That simple.

"Sure, kiddo," Riccarda said, and sank into a messy heap of coils in front of her. "How about some basic hand-to-hand? We can call dibs on a practice ground, go all vessel-form, and I'll show you the moves."

"Or," said the Mercurian, stepping up past the Seraph, "you could learn something _useful_ , like how to shoot." He elbowed Riccarda in a convenient spread of coil. "She's a Mercurian, and you want to teach her to, what, punch people? What you want," he continued, addressing Luna directly, though she gathered it was said as much for Riccarda's benefit as her own, "is basic firearms. Once you're at the point of inflicting damage on another person, you want your enemies to stay _down_. Bopping them in the nose is unlikely to do that."

"Some people," Riccarda said dryly, "are assigned to work in civilized nations, where it's frowned on to walk around in a Role loaded down with a half dozen guns."

"Yes," said the Mercurian, "and I'm _so_ glad I'm stationed in North America instead." He smiled brilliantly, and something inside Luna's chest did flips. "Trade badges, huh? You're newly made?"

"I'm _contracting_ with Trade," Luna said. "They said I could do the badge sequence, since I'm still below angelic standard in Forces. Then when I hit nine, I'll go ask an Archangel to take me on." She said that with all the confidence she could muster, because she didn't want to be--off model. Doing things wrong. But this was important, and Marc had _said_ she could, so it couldn't be wrong. Even if it wasn't exactly ordinary.

"Huh," said the Mercurian, which was barely even a word in angelic, but still carried all sort of weight. But it wasn't an unfriendly sort of weight. He offered her a hand, for a quick shake. "I still think you should start with--"

Luna didn't mind that he hadn't let go of her hand, but she was somewhat worried by the way his expression froze. That and the unfinished sentence. "Nice to meet you?" she tried.

"Same," the Mercurian said, sounding terribly distracted about it.

Riccarda snapped a wing back and forth in front of the Mercurian's face. "That's new," she told Luna conversationally. "Seraph to Mercurian, Seraph to Mercurian, are you there, Fide--"

The Mercurian's left hand snapped out to clamp the Seraph's mouth shut. "Call me Sean," he said to Luna. "You have...an unexpected background."

"I get that sometimes," Luna said cautiously. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"Good question. Hey, let me see that badge requirement." He swept the clipboard out of her hands before she could object, or hold on properly. Riccarda, her mouth freed, rubbed a wing's edge along her jaw and frowned at him. "Could I ask you a few questions about how that came about? Sort of a personal interest thing. You could call that the, uh, fair trade for a lesson in how to shoot things."

The Seraph reared up half of her body, and looped that portion of herself in a wide ring around Luna. Almost too close for comfort, and lying between the two Mercurians. "Or she could come learn hand-to-hand, and you, dear boy, could tell me why you're so interested all of a sudden."

Luna reached over Riccarda to grab the edge of her clipboard. "That...sounds fair?"

"You're not cleared for that," Sean said to Riccarda, ever so sweetly, and let go of the clipboard. When his smile turned back on Luna, she just wanted to...float. And worry, at the same time. It was almost like getting hit with one of those rare instances of a Habbalite's resonance that made you happy and in love, and knowing all the same that there was something wrong going on. "Luna, do you have a vessel?"

"Not yet--"

"Then you can't exactly do vessel-form training, can you? Best to work with another Mercurian. That'll give you the best idea of how it works on the corporeal, wings and so forth aside."

Riccarda shoved her head between the two of them. "Luna," she said, "you'll have to excuse us for a while. I need to go dangle 'Sean' here by his heels from a treetop until he gives me a better explanation. How about you come back tomorrow, and we can figure out a training approach for you then?"

"Okay," Luna said, "if you think that's a good plan?"

"Yes," Riccarda said firmly, "I do. Lovely to see you again. Stop by any time." She slithered into a spring-shape all around the other Mercurian, and touched her serpentine nose to his delightfully human one. "Any objections?"

"Plenty," Sean said, trying to wiggle an arm free.

"Great! You can tell me about them at length. In private. See you later, sweetheart!" That last was directed to Luna, and then Riccarda launched herself upward, Mercurian slipping out of her grasp on the way, but following along.

They looked to be arguing, but Luna couldn't hear them from down on the ground.

#

Luna consulted Vaina's tablet surreptitiously when the Stone Cherub arrived to talk construction. There was an app for animal identification, done as a series of questions, and she worked out in seven questions that this particular Cherub was based on an animal called a mole. The Cherub--she'd introduced herself as Gemma Harlow, of Clan Harlow, though Luna wasn't sure what the second part meant--was deep in conversation with Vaina by the time Luna had that information down, the two Guardians crouched over the plans Vaina had spread out on the dry section of floor.

"I'd as soon go stone," Gemma was saying, tapping a portion of the plans with the knuckles of her paw. "Or concrete. No two ways about it, it's good habit. Even if the wood won't rot in the water here--"

"But it won't," Vaina said, twining his tail casually about Luna's forearm as she sat down beside him. "And I'd prefer wood. It's what I know how to work with, and I'd like to do as much of this myself as I can."

Gemma frowned down her triangular nose at him, and then shrugged, a rise and fall of enormous gray shoulders. "Work like this, collaboration's best," she said. "Still. I can make you the glass, no problem. Heaven knows you've earned that and more."

Luna checked her clipboard while the two of them discussed thickness, weight, lead content, colors, joints and seams and construction details that she appreciated in the abstract but didn't find interesting in the details. Half the first sequence of badges were already checked off the list, but that's because she had started by clearing the easiest ones. And a few lines still said _To be determined_ , which meant a reliever would show up at some point to hand her a more specific assignment that went in that slot.

_Ask a Servitor of another Word about an aspect of their Word that seems unusual or inexplicable to you. Listen. Ask as many questions as you'd like and they're willing to answer, but don't argue about it this time._

She put a dot next to that one on the sheet, and stood up when the Cherubim finished their discussion. "Could I ask you about Stone?"

Gemma rolled an eye towards the clipboard. "There's more to growth than following the rules," she said. "You'd be better off ignoring that tit-for-tat nonsense and finding a group of people who've already been through hard times. Who'll show you the ropes, help you keep your feet on the ground. Help you back up when you scrape your knees, without charging you for the privilege."

Luna was not entirely sure if that counted for ticking off the assignment or not. "Where do you find a community?"

"In Heaven? Nearly anywhere," the mole-Cherub said, her frown softening. "Relievers grow up with other relievers, settle in with older angels that take to them, or they take to. Make helpful little pests of themselves until someone takes them under a wing. New-made angels, their Archangel usually knows enough to assign them to someone for starting help, and that person introduces them around. You're new-redeemed, so you have a Cherub, and you settle in with _his_ community. Adapt to how they do things, and..."

Gemma fell silent, looking at Vaina, who watched her steadily in return.

"Could maybe find people who work on projects you're interested in," Gemma said. "Offer to help. Big projects need more help, there's usually room for someone with enthusiasm but no skills. Learn on the job. You have to put some effort into anything worth getting." On which note she nodded to both of them, and shuffled out of the office.

When the door shut, Luna said to Vaina, "I don't need a community. I have _you_. And Johannes, and Riccarda, and there are other people I've talked to. And there's the badge sequence, and I mean to take classes, and--"

"She's right," Vaina said. "There ought to be more of a community for you."

This conversation would have felt more right underwater. Everything felt more right down there, with her hair floating about her and the glide of water down her throat with every breath. But that was not where they were, and she said, "That's just Stone being...Stone. I don't really understand them anyway, though they make more sense than Fire."

"All the elemental Words are harder to understand from the outside than the ones with more social meanings," Vaina said, and did not reject the hand she twined into one of his. "They are not the oldest Words, but in some ways they are the most fundamental. Fire, Waters, Wind, and Stone. Or, in another way of looking at the elements, Stone and Flowers, as the metal and wood that make up the five-part set. I think it is no coincidence that none of them are Mercurians, though they all have Mercurian Servitors. There is a way of looking at the world that sees what is there before it sees what could or should be."

"Waters understood Stone," Luna said, and wondered why she could not.

"Waters had no difficulty with Stone," Vaina said, in gentle correction. "We no more understood them than we did Fire. In some ways I think those two Words pair off as well as Wind and Waters once did. Sometimes you can understand people the best when you're nearly their opposite. There is a balance to it that humans need. Water and air and fire and earth, all necessary to life in one sense or another."

"Then what does Wind do now, without Waters?"

"What it always did," Vaina said, though now he sounded uncertain. "Without balance, or with all the other Words providing that balance. I don't know."

#

Luna had been halfway to the Grove to catch up with Riccarda--and find out what in the world that whole matter with the shirtless Mercurian had been about--when a reliever caught up with her, its golden wings leaving a sparkling trail of glitter in its wake. "Badge update," it gasped, wave a slip of paper at her. "Gintare's only upstairs for a weekend, and her schedule's packed, so if you want to talk to a Bright, now's the time!"

And so she had turned right back around, leaving the distant treetops increasingly distant, and shot towards the skyscraper that matched the address on the paper as fast as her wings would take her.

The Bright Lilim's suite in the building was enormous, at least compared to Vaina's office or Johannes' tent. Three big airy rooms, with archways joining them in a triangle with irregular sides. The door had opened at her first knock, and Luna padded across thick carpet through a room that was all office--computer screens and desk and chairs set around a conference table--into a room that was all lounge, hung with tapestries and filled with low sofas. A chandelier spread light out from dozens of crystal lights hung in strands.

Gintare herself was obvious: someone might mistake her for a Mercurian at a great distance or in terrible lighting, but from across the room she was anything but, no more Mercurian than an Elohite was. An aura of gold crackled around her, tiny numbers appearing and vanishing within its nimbus, and her wings were...not reliever wings, though the shape was almost like it. More like the halos that Mercurians wore, but stretched into three elongated discs on each side, burnished bronze and swaying lightly behind her. And _she_ knew how to dress properly, in a purple pencil skirt, asymmetrical black blouse embroidered in wing-matching bronze at the neck, and scarlet pumps that reminded Luna she really ought to buy shoes one of these days.

The shaggy brown and white sofa she sat on didn't quite match the decor, but one couldn't have everything.

"You must be Luna," the Bright said, waving a hand her way. The series of bracelets that jingled together on that wrist were, Luna realized, not fashion at all, but a half-dozen Geases of various sizes. "Come sit down, if you'd like."

Luna sat down on the couch, and immediately realized this was actually another angel. "Pardon me," she said to the Cherub, whose head had been tucked away behind a pile of cushions. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all," said the Cherub. "Perfectly comfortable."

"Luna, this is Hrothvaldr," said Gintare, "and he would get up to say hello but since we're sitting on him, there's no real need. Hrothvaldr, are we bothering you?"

"I am entirely happy where I am," said the Cherub. "Don't mind me. I'm thinking." Hrothvaldr's wings proved to be hidden within the enormous piles of shaggy fur, and Luna couldn't work out what sort of creature the Cherub was like. A cow? The horns and hooves suggested that, but the body shape wasn't quite right. Probably the details weren't important, though she liked to know.

"There you have it," said the Bright Lilim, and shifted about so that the two of them could talk across the Cherub's back. "You're new to Trade, right? Fresh from redemption?"

"It's been a few months," Luna said, "and I'm not exactly--with Trade. I'm contracting."

Gintare's mouth quirked. "Oh, I know that story. You should've heard me when I joined up. And he's speaking the truth, if you were wondering. One of my sisters came up through Trade the same way I did, and ended up with another Word. No argument at all. Asked that she remember Trade for future contract work, if it wasn't too much trouble, and then he arranged an introduction to the Archangel she decided suited her best."

"Who did she end up with?" Luna asked.

"The Wind. Which probably shouldn't have surprised anyone."

"Does she--" Luna stopped as Gintare put up a hand.

"She's been dead some three hundred years," Gintare said, "which I'm putting right out there because it'll hurt if you ask questions and then I have to get to that later. Then you'd feel bad about it, and, well, we all take our chances, when we do corporeal work. It's some satisfaction to me that they got the bastards who did her in. But that doesn't bring her back."

"Oh," Luna said, and swallowed. She tried not to look at the bracelets on the Bright Lilim's wrist, and ended up staring at her own hands instead. "I think any question I could ask now would sound...inane."

"No." Gintare reached out a hand. And after a second of hesitation, Luna put her own within it. "Your questions are fine," the Bright said, and squeezed her hand. "That's why you're here. If a reliever came in, I'd talk around this sort of thing. Those kids are too young and too innocent to think about things like final death. You lived in Hell. You're not innocent, and you already know what death is. What you don't get yet is what _Heaven_ is, and I'm happy to help with that."

"Are there many of you?" Luna asked. "Bright Lilim." Because for all that she knew it was otherwise, she couldn't help but think of Leah, abandoned in the Marches to speak with a Prince who might want who knew what out of her, as a Lilim.

"Not so many as any other Choir in Heaven," Gintare said, and shrugged. "But most Choirs would look patchy if they only got new members from redemptions, even aside from the Game trying to jump us and pretend we don't exist. And there aren't many of us who make it all the way to Heaven and then want to sit around up _here_ , when there's work back on the corporeal that we could be doing. Some of them get together now and again, but that's not my sort of party. The Brights who are stuck in Heaven to make it to meetings are usually the ones with serious damage, and I have _work_ to do." She stopped, and laughed. "I sound terrible when I put it that way. Honestly, I like most of my sisters, among those who made it to Heaven. But I'm not a therapist, and what I'm good at isn't holding their hands. They all have Cherubim and Elohim and so forth for that." She tangled her fingers in Hrothvaldr's long hair. "Especially Cherubim."

"Does the resonance change?" Luna asked. "Moving from Hell to Heaven."

"Not as much as it does for other people, when they redeem," Gintare said. "More than some people realize. You get a lot more Need that's _true_ need, and not just want, though there's still a fair amount of the latter. Want me to read yours?"

Luna nodded, not quite trusting herself to say yes. There were things she might need that she didn't _want_ to need. Binding to an Archangel. A proper Word that was still alive and full of people.

"You Need work to do," Gintare said. "Proper work that helps other people, and not just you."

"I do like the badge sequence," Luna said, "it's useful, but it's not..." She waved her free hand, and liked that the Bright's still held her. The feel of fingernails resting lightly against her palm. "Even when I offer people a fair trade, or when I offer them help outright, it's aimed at teaching me things. And everything in Heaven is--most things in Heaven are fine. There's work to do, but so much of it is...making happy people happier, practicing hobbies, doing light and peaceful things or even learning things but it's all...it's all setup. It doesn't _fix_ the things that are broken."

"Most redeemed feel the same way," Gintare said. She clasped Luna's hand between both of hers, then let it go. "You'll get your work eventually, Luna. But you'll have to trust an Archangel enough to accept their offer. You, me, any one of us who fought our way to Heaven and asked it to welcome us in as its own children, we're too small, too _fragile_ to fix the world on our own. We need help. All the good intentions in the world can't change that."

#

"It's difficult to say what's best," Johannes said, and offered her the catalog, folded to the page of his choosing.

"I know," Luna said, "because if it was easy I'd already be doing it." She ran a finger down the column of pictures. "Sometimes I feel like I'm in exactly the right place, where I always should have been, and sometimes it's so frustrating. Because I'm not making anything better for anyone."

"You are," Johannes said. "You're making life better for Vaina, who loves you. For me, your friend. For yourself, and that's important too. Being selfless doesn't mean having no _self_. You're as valuable as anyone else, and you're learning how to be better at--" He paused, trying to work out the words. He did that more as an Elohite than as a reliever. "How to be more yourself. Your best self. You can't save someone who's drowning by leaping in when you don't know how to swim."

"Swimming," Luna said wryly, "I have down. But--a metaphor. I get it." She spun the catalog around, and tapped her finger on a picture. "What about these ones?"

"They don't look as practical as some of the others," Johannes said. "But they're very...green?"

"I'm not sure how much practical matters in Heaven," Luna said, but she drew a line through that pair of shoes anyway. "I want to get back to the corporeal. Or maybe to the Marches, I'm not sure which is better. Best. I can only do so much here. But I also want to help Vaina, and...do you think they'd let him go back to Earth with me, if I went there? Even while still being Waters?"

"They sent him into the Marches," Johannes said. "Though that was a peculiar circumstance. You could ask. But I'm not sure it's best for him to stay Waters forever."

"Best," Luna decided, "is complicated."

Johannes nodded firmly.

And then a reliever slipped into the tent with a clipboard in hand, saying, "Johannes?" as it looked between the two of them. "Hello and excuse me and I'm suppose to help you practice with your resonance..."

"I'll be back later," Luna said, and smiled at the reliever on the way out. She took the catalog with her, and wondered if sometimes _best_ was just another way of saying _best I can figure out_.

#

She walked through the Eternal City in new shoes, and appreciated the click of the soles against the marble streets. Never so loud as to bother the people around her (and there were so _many_ blessed souls in the city, more than anywhere else in Heaven but the Bazaar itself), always loud enough that she could hear each individual step. Her shoes were green and white and glossy, and she loved them dearly. Maybe more dearly than was appropriate for what was merely a thing, but still. It didn't hurt anyone to like a well-made object bought at a fair price.

The address on the next assignment took her to high white walls, an entire block that was a single square building; all the windows set in the wall were high and narrow, perfectly regular. She didn't see why anyone would want to live in such a place. But she knocked on the enormous iron-bound wooden door all the same.

The door swung open, and the arched hallway before her ran past several doors and a stairwell on each side to open into a central garden she never would have guessed had been hidden inside.

She ignored the labels on the doors, both the stairwells, to walk down the hallway into the garden. It wasn't _wild_ the way Flowers' gardens were. Not a leaf out of place on the trimmed hedges, every tree set in its line, and the marble paths dividing the garden into dozens of tiny lots ran at right angles to each other. The lots, though, for all that they lined up, they were each different. This one had a stone carving of a robed man feeding birds from his hands; that one had a red and white flowers arranged in patches to mark out an abstract design she couldn't interpret but found beautiful. A handful of relievers fluttered about a human soul with a watering can, who looked up as Luna drew near.

"Can I help you?" asked the human, pushed hair back out of her eyes with a gloved hand.

"I'm looking for a Kyriotate," Luna said, and checked her clipboard. "Nikostratos? They're supposed to live here."

The human gave her a thoughtful look. "You're not from Judgment, are you."

"No," Luna said. "Should I be?"

"Never mind," said the human. "She lives on the fourth floor. If you don't want to take the stairs, head straight up to the balcony, and check the name plates by the door." She nodded towards the balconies that Luna hadn't looked up yet to see, which lined the hidden garden on all sides, three lines of them for the floors above the first.

Luna returned to the entrance hall, and took the stairs. Flying was nice enough, but she liked the click of her soles on each step. The connection of things that were entirely _there_ , one to the other, in a way moving through the air couldn't replicate. (Maybe the Servitors of Wind felt differently, and appreciated currents of the air the way she did currents of the water, as true forces.)

Besides, it gave her a chance to check her clipboard again. "Talk to a Kyriotate about their Choir" had already been easily marked off the list days ago, as part of the badge for understanding the major Choirs. And speaking with Gintare had been an unspecified sort of task, just _go talk to this person_ , but Brights were rare and the conversation had...made sense. Even if she kept asking the wrong questions.

This one had only given her a name and address. Not even instructions, though she could figure out the basics of tracking down that person from that much information. And so when she found the right nameplate by a door in the fourth floor hall, she didn't quite know what to expect. Or do. Except to tap the bell hung in a niche by the door, and wait for an answer.

The door cracked open, and several eyes lined up to peer out the crack. "Hello?" said the Kyriotate, in a single voice. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Luna, and I'm working on my badges for Trade. I'm not with the Judgment."

The door opened all the way, and the Kyriotate drifted backward to give her space to enter. "No, I didn't think you were. They tend to be..."

Luna stepped inside, and suggested, when that sentence never finished, "In groups of three? Larger? Dressed in more formal clothing? Not working on Trade badges?"

"Any and all of those," said the Kyriotate. Though Luna was accustomed by now to thinking of that Choir as made of plural individuals, theys and thems who could do seven things at once during a slow conversation, this one was clearly a her. A single voice drifted up from the Kyriotate's cloudy self, which seemed mostly...tucked away. A few eyes, one mouth, and everything else buried inside.

Along with a muddy current flowing through the Hive's body. Discord, which Luna had seen on plenty of demons before, but almost never on angels. (Geases weren't exactly the same thing, and Gintare hadn't worn hers like anything to be ashamed of.) She couldn't see what sort of Discord it was, but it was clear as shallow water to see it was there.

"Have a seat, if you'd like." The Kyriotate drifted deeper into the two-room suite, and Luna tagged along behind. The garden had been quiet, but this suite was...quieter. Her shoes echoed on the floor, though the ceiling wasn't high. There wasn't much to be seen in the front room, with its clean whitewashed walls and bare stone floor. A trio of chairs, a knotted rug, one painting of a deer standing on a misty hillside. And the second room didn't have much more: a wooden bench, a stack of books, and two chipped swords hung on a rack. "Would you like a drink?"

"Yes, thank you," Luna said, and sat down on the bench. There proved to be something hidden behind the books, because the Kyriotate poured water from a pitcher into a single clay cup, and offered it to her. "Thank you," she said again, and felt her feathers fluffing into disarray behind her. "You're Nikostratos?"

"Generally."

Luna's awkwardness dissolved into irritation, and she decided to let it. "Either you are or you aren't," she said, and hooked an ankle over her knee. "I don't even know why I'm supposed to talk with you, except that the badge list gave this address, and mentioned you by name. It didn't say 'talk with' or 'ask questions' or 'learn a skill' or anything like that, only...Nikostratos. So if you don't want to talk, I can leave you alone, and cross that off, if you're _mostly_ Nikostratos, Kyriotate of the Sword. Check."

"I am," said the Kyriotate, "but sometimes I'd rather not be. Does that help any?"

"What part do you not want to be?"

The Kyriotate rotated slowly before her, eyes blinking at her. "Nikostratos. A Kyriotate. Of the Sword. Sometimes I don't want to be any of them, and sometimes I only want to not be one or the other. Or two at a time. Any combination at all."

"Oh," Luna said. She slid the clipboard aside on the bench, the cup of water beside it, and pulled her knees to her chest. "Why?"

"That's a rather personal question," maybe-Nikostratos said. "Why should I answer that?"

"You don't have to," Luna said. "But if you would explain it for me..." She tucked her chin down onto her knees. "I'm new to being a Mercurian. Not...fledging new. Redeemed new. I came from Fire, before. I don't want to go back, I don't want to ever be _anywhere_ near anything like that again. I don't want to be an Impudite again. None of that. The name I kept, but there's nothing wrong with that. So I don't really see how...someone could be here, part of Heaven, and want to not."

"I don't want to stop serving Heaven," said the Kyriotate. "I never have, and I never would. I have _always_ tried to do what's right, but..." She puffed out a wisp of vapor from the gray cloud of her body. Luna could almost imagine her as a rain cloud like in the pictures of the corporeal, ready to pour down on a city. "But sometimes," Nikostratos said wearily, "what I thought was right was not what my orders said, and in the Sword, there is no room for...personal interpretation. Or disagreement. To disobey orders is dissonant. I have been disobedient, Outcast, dissonant, Discordant, and sometimes in bad company."

"It doesn't sound as if you thought it was bad company," Luna said, because she had learned to pay _attention_ to the way the language of Heaven weighted opinion, both personal and that of other people.

"I spent time with demons and ethereals," Nikostratos said. "Well. One of each. That is, by definition, bad company."

"I spent time with demons and ethereals," Luna said, "and that's how I got to Heaven. Though that was no thanks to the ethereals themselves, so I'm not really arguing for them. Why didn't you just...change Words?"

"It's not that easy." The Kyriotate settled lower in the air, until Luna had to look down to see her, a misty lump near the floor. "I have always been part of the Sword, as much as I have always been a Kyriotate. To stop being either seems equally terrible. Or, at times, equally appealing. And what other Archangel would _want_ me, as I am? Now that I'm back in Heaven, no one would ever let me back to the corporeal."

"Are you a prisoner here?" Luna asked.

Nikostratos found a hand to wiggle in the air. "I am not allowed to leave Heaven, but I have no minders, no fetters. If I were so inclined, I could sneak away between visits from triads and therapists and old comrades prone to giving lectures, and find a Tether that would let me travel downstairs without asking too many questions I couldn't answer. I've no need of a vessel; a sparrow is enough to let me slip away and disappear. With all that practice in avoiding hunters before, I could stay on the corporeal...nearly forever."

"But you don't," Luna said. "You haven't."

"And I won't," Nikostratos said.

"Why?"

"You have a lot of questions," said the Kyriotate.

"I'm young," Luna said. She looked down past the green toes of her shoes to the Kyrio-cloud, which was in a way like a fox-Cherub. A celestial body repeating the image of something from the corporeal, as a way of expressing what it was truly as a soul. "If you want, you could ask me personal questions, too. I don't mind. But I think I see why they sent me to talk with you, and I want to know why, if you don't like the service you're in, if you think you could do better on your own, why you don't just...leave. And do it on your own."

"Because," said the Kyriotate, "someone sent me back here."

"Judgment?"

"Sent, not dragged. A friend--tricked me into it. Told me he'd arranged for a place where I could work off dissonance safely, and called them up to tell them I needed to be brought back to Heaven. That if they didn't, I was going to Fall. And he was...probably right. I was trying to own what wasn't mine. The bodies of people, when I was only ever supposed to borrow them, at most. Leave them better off, and not just use them for my own goals." The Kyriotate snorted, a peculiar sound that was made from several points, unlike her usual singular voice. "It was terrible. It was _embarrassing_. Even a demon thought that I would be better off in Heaven than as a Shedite. But he was right. I refuse to become a force for corruption and harm and selfish perversion, even if I can no longer be what I ought properly."

"What happened to your friend?" Luna asked.

"I don't know," Nikostratos said. "I asked, but... I don't know. I'm told it's not appropriate to ask, and that if he ever came _here_ , they would let me know. So no news is bad news."

"A demon sent me here," Luna said. "And she didn't follow. She gave me over to angels and she didn't _follow_ , and I wonder if she's--like you, on the opposite side. Except I don't know why anyone would say, even if I want to be that, I want to be over there, I shouldn't, not when the other that-and-there is angel and Heaven."

She straightened her fingers out from where she was clenching her knees, and sat back. A proper seated position on the bench, knees down and hands folded in her lap.

"Sometimes," she said, "it feels like it would be easier if I could go make decisions for other people. Because they're doing it wrong. But that's not how it works."

"That's how Shedim work," Nikostratos said. "It would be easier. But that's not how it _should_ work."

Luna leaned over her knees to look down at the Kyriotate on the floor. "If you want to come visit," she said, "and you probably won't, but if you do want, come see me over at the edge of the Bazaar. You can ask after Vaina, my Cherub, since I live with him."

"I might," Nikostratos said. "But I probably won't. Did you mean that offer, about personal questions?"

"I did."

The Kyriotate rose from the floor, to about the height of the bench seat. "Who do you love more than anyone else?"

"Vaina," Luna said. "He was the one who brought me here. Who called an Archangel who isn't even his, to ask for help in getting me into Heaven. He would do anything for me, and I'd do anything for him."

Several eyes swam up through the Kyriotate to focus on Luna. "What would you do if he were on the other side?"

What a terrible thought.

But a fair question.

"I would ask to join the service of whatever Archangel would give me the most help," Luna said, "and make sure I was ready enough to not make things worse, and then I would go get him back."

"But you can't make anyone come back," Nikostratos said. "Judgment can drag people in for punishment, but you can't make a demon redeem."

"If he still loved me," Luna said, "he would come back for me. And if he didn't love me anymore, then--he wouldn't be Vaina."

"It's not that simple," Nikostratos said.

"No," Luna said, "it's probably not. But I would still _try_."

#

Since she was in the city anyway, Luna went looking for someone in Judgment who could help her with research. And she did, after polite asking about and standing in one short line, acquire a shadowy Malakite who had no smiles but a great deal of brisk assistance.

"It's not exactly the kind of thing we documented," Elishava said, flicking briskly through index cards in long drawer. Which was one of dozens of equally narrow, long drawers set into an entire cabinet of such, and the room they stood in held nothing but rows upon rows of those cabinets. "Word transfers, certainly. I could pull you a list of living angels in Heaven that were serving Waters when your Guardian entered Trauma, with maybe one or two percent uncertainty based on the Words that report back to us infrequently. Perhaps up to five percent, given the number who joined Wind. However, we've never documented personal relationships except as evidence in trials."

"I'm almost sure he was never in any trial," Luna said. She sat cross-legged in the air, wings drifting up and down behind her. "Do you have geographical locations for their postings?"

"Only on a few, and those wouldn't necessarily be anyone he knew. Many of the angels of Waters who did corporeal work were posted in small communities. Only one per, and no reason to walk a week away to meet up with a friend." Elishava held up an index card. "This one may be your best chance. A Mercurian with a similar creation date, and her name suggests similar geographic posting. If she doesn't know him, she might be able to direct you to someone who would. Your Choir is most likely to track such connections, and remember them thousands of years later."

A reliever swooped down to take the card from the Malakite's hand. A moment of scribbling later, it returned the index card to Elishava, and passed a copy to Luna.

"Thank you," Luna said. "Is there anything I can do for you in return?"

"In return for doing my job? Hardly, child." Elishiva nodded to Luna. "Act justly."

"I would anyway," Luna said. "Or at least, I would try."

"Good," Elishiva said, and turned back to the narrow drawer to replace the card in the place it had come from.

#

Bargaining was delightful. Luna had sat for half an hour between two stalls in the plaza, just listening to other people debate prices. The stall to her left held bright scarfs and sashes, and the Kyriotate who sold them (while working briskly at a loom at the back of the stall all the while, making more) haggled wildly, starting at outrageous prices and letting themselves be argued down to an Essence or two per item. The stall to her right was stacked with handmade soaps, and the two souls staffing it always insisted that no, they couldn't possibly _charge_ for this sort of thing, they made them for fun and might as well give them away, until customers argued them into accepting an Essence for the counter reliquary. At which point one soul or the other might finally admit that they were saving up to help a friend with a talisman it was working on, but oh, there was no real _hurry_ , and thank you.

Or sometimes people walked away with soap for free, or paid seven Essence for a scarf, and that was fine, too. No one left unhappy with what they had paid or received, and the merchants never gave up their merchandise without being happy with what they'd received in return.

Luna slid to her feet, and walked to the front of the soap stall. "I'd like the ones shaped like dolphins," she said, "one of each color, and you know I _will_ give you an Essence for that, unless you really insist otherwise. What talisman is your friend working on?"

And once that was done, she stepped up to the Kyriotate's stall, and spent five minutes convincing them to let her have a moire silk scarf, all pale green waves, for two Essence. Then another few minutes to argue that she ought to be able to take three of them for five Essence together.

Which took her down to no Essence at all, given what the shoes had cost, but she rather liked that feeling too. Empty in some ways, almost shaky around that space inside, but knowing there'd be more later, and that she'd done something with it. Had presents to give out. She tied her hair back with one of the three scarves, and walked on towards the distant spiral that held Johannes' tent.

And halfway up the spiral, a Mercurian landed neatly beside her, and turned a brilliant smile on her. "Luna! I thought you were coming back today, for that training."

"Hello, Sean," Luna said, and smiled back at him. Wondered what he thought of the new scarf, or the new shoes, because they didn't seem like _his_ sort of thing, but surely he had an opinion on them. She had opinions on all sorts of outfits that other Mercurians wore and she never would. "I am coming by, right after this. Unless that'll be too late?"

"It's not that much of a rush," he said. "Can I walk with you? We could talk on the way."

"Of course." Luna continued up the spiral path. Which was slower than flying directly, so much slower she had almost made up her mind to fly the rest of the way, but--oh, no, this was a perfectly good place to walk. With that Mercurian walking alongside her, like they were here together. He looked entirely out of place, with that gun holster (even the Malakim didn't carry those out like that in the Bazaar) over his bare chest, and entirely at home, as if he walked here all the time. That much confidence. "So what did you want to ask about?"

"People you knew back in Hell," Sean said. "Awkward topic, I know, but I've got this feeling it might be relevant to a project of mine. Riccarda said you came from Fire?"

"That's right," Luna said. Not the topic she would've chosen for discussing with this Mercurian, but she couldn't exactly be upset about it. That was War, for you. Always focused on the enemy. Presumably. "I didn't really know anyone back there. I mean--I knew of people, or I talked to some people when I was delivering messages, but besides that I was always in Althea's office. Or running around doing things for her. There was that one Djinn who taught classes, but I didn't know him very well. I'd be surprised if he showed up at all."

"Althea, huh," Sean said. "Habbalite?" She nodded. "Thought so. How long were you working for Fire?"

"Ever since I was made." Luna paused for a moment to let a reliever cloud stream out of a tent, their voices blending together until they sounded more like wind chimes than a portion of conversation. "That wasn't all that long. Less than a year. I couldn't say exactly."

"I see." Sean looked thoughtful, and she tried to watch his face without being all obvious about it. "You didn't know anyone outside of Fire?"

"No, not at all," Luna said. "I never even left Sheol until Althea took me to the Marches. That's where I met--well, Vaina, eventually. And he's the one who brought me back here." She added, to be fair, "Him and Catherine, though I still think she would've rather taken--other options. For all that she's a Mercurian too, she's not the nicest person."

"That's angels for you," Sean said. "There's nice, and there's good, and they're not the same thing." He looked down at her sidelong, and smiled again. "No other demons in-between, huh? Because I was sure I picked up on someone else who was important to you, who couldn't be that Habbalite or that Djinn. And I _thought_ they were a demon."

"There was someone else," Luna said. "...and this is my friend's tent, but I don't think he'd mind if you came in. I'll just be a minute."

Johannes looked up as they entered, a book in his hands. "Hello, Luna," he said. "Is this a friend of yours?"

"This is Sean," Luna said, "from War. Except that's not his real name." She waved an airy hand for the strange ways of War, exactly as if this was normal. Maybe it was and she just hadn't run into that before. "We were talking on the way, it's part of my badge sequence. And this is for you." She offered one of the scarves out. That was not exactly the gift-giving speech she'd first had in mind, but after more thought, she'd decided that Johannes didn't really _need_ a speech. Though he would have been polite about it if she'd given one, and even appreciative of the thought involved. "A fledging present, since I think you should have one from me, too. And it'll go perfectly with your eyes."

"It does," Sean said. "New fledge, huh? Congratulations." And he leaned in to shake Johannes' hand.

"Thank you," Johannes said to Luna, "it's lovely." After the handshake, he folded the scarf about his neck to hang in loose coils there, like a image of a translucent coiled Seraph. "If you need to talk, you could continue here. I was reading up on economics for my next proficiency test. Or was it something private? I could step out."

"I'm not about to throw you out of your own tent," Luna said, and dropped down cross-legged on the floor. "It's nothing private, just talking about some people I knew before I got to Heaven."

Sean waved a hand, and sat down across from her. "As she said." Really, it was more of a lounge, practically a sprawl, as seated positions went. Maybe she ought to learn to be less formal when around friends. Or maybe that was a War thing, to always look so at ease wherever they happened to be. "So who was the someone else?" he continued, looking directly at her. "They must've been important, or they wouldn't have shown up like in your background."

"She was," Luna said. "Is. There was this one demon I met in the Marches, who was--well, she was pretending to be an angel around Vaina and Catherine, and a Lilim around me and Althea, even though she wasn't either of those things. She was the one who got me out of the Domain before it went squish, and sent me off with Vaina. I mean, she set it up like it was some sort of trade, but it obviously _wasn't_ , because she had everything--I really would've followed her anywhere, just for getting me away from Althea, it was worth that and then some--and still made it out to be a deal, that the angels got to pick something to take home. Which is how I got to Heaven."

"That," Sean said, "is...a fascinating story." And over to the side, Johannes lifted his head from his book to turn enormous jade eyes towards the Warrior, with an expression Luna couldn't interpret. It was rather like the ones Johannes used to have as a reliever when he was trying to figure out some new piece of information Luna had given him about Hell, that didn't make any sense from the context of Heaven.

"It was pretty weird," Luna said. "But it worked out fine." She leaned sideways to set down the last scarf and the soaps, somewhere out of the way. Where she'd remember them later. "Was that what you wanted to ask about?"

"Yeah," Sean said, gaze focused somewhere that wasn't there in the tent with him. As if he were trying to see something that wasn't present, but might reveal itself anyway after sufficient study. "How long ago was this? In the last...month, say?"

"No, I've been in Heaven for months now," Luna said. "So at least...three months ago?" She looked over to Johannes, who nodded. "About that. I could find the specific date by checking when I signed my first contract with Trade and counting back a few days. It all happened awfully fast."

This time, when Sean didn't respond immediately, Luna tried _looking_ into him. But all she could pick up was the obvious sort of thing, that he considered himself to be in the presence of two nice enough kids. Which was...accurate. He was a Vassal, probably decades (or centuries!) old, and she was none of the above. She wasn't even a proper Servitor to any Archangel, and plenty of relievers had her beat on that count. But she had hoped, the tiniest bit, that he might think more of her than that.

"That's really something," Sean said at last, which was such a non-response that it had to mean something. That didn't sound like he was bored, or disinterested, but almost like he was trying to come across that way. Or only mildly interested, the way anyone might be about a redemption story, except there was no good reason for him to stop for seconds to come up with an answer if he didn't care.

Which meant he did care. And didn't want her to know.

Luna had a lot of experience in dealing with people who cared about something and didn't want her to know, but those had all been demons. It was _weird_ when an angel sounded that way.

"It was," she said, in an ordinary agreeable voice, and wondered if the other Mercurian could tell the difference. "Any particular reason why you were asking?"

"Oh, I thought it was interesting," Sean said lightly, which could not be a lie, but was so broad in the angelic language as to be a response to nearly any question ever that began with _why_. "I suppose you've told other people the story several times before."

"Parts of it," Luna said. "Usually I don't go into much detail about meeting that demon, because people ask questions." She unfolded her legs so that she could sit the way Johannes usually did. Back on her heels, hands on her knees, back straight. Althea would be proud. Althea was probably dead. Luna did not mind thinking about the intersection of those two statements, anymore. "Also, this one Seraph told me that it was best not to tell anyone _who_ did that, because that might get her into trouble. The demon, I mean. Since she sent me off with a pair of angels, and went back to Hell herself."

"That's not bad advice," Sean said.

"And since you stopped asking about what happened as soon as I talked about her," Luna said, "I think you already know her, or at least know about her. Enough that you were 'interested' when you read my background in the Grove yesterday. Is that so?"

Sean's smile became fixed, which was fascinating in its own right. "You're a sharp one," he said.

"I try. That wasn't exactly an answer, Sean." Luna kept her eyes on him directly, even when she might have wanted to look away, or blush, or otherwise acknowledge that he was older than her, bigger than her, carrying a distinction, from a terrifying Word.

But this was Heaven, and he could not harm her. Not in the ways she was afraid of. He wasn't even enough of a friend to be able to harm her in the ways Heaven would allow.

"It wasn't, exactly," he agreed, in good cheer. "I work for War, and that means there are all sorts of things I'm not allowed to talk about, even in Heaven. If you want a complete lack of secrets, that'd be more Revelation's gig. Can I ask you a few more questions, or does the lack of full disclosure bother you?"

"The lack of disclosure does bother me," Luna said. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see how Johannes was watching them, even with his head still bent over the book. Quiet as if he wasn't there at all, and so very _present_. She wouldn't have dared say these things, lock eyes with an angel so much more dangerous than she was, without a friend beside her. "But you can keep asking questions. I'm not making any promises about answering them."

"You're sure you're not Trade?" Sean said, and then flashed her that charming smile. Which she could not quite disbelieve, even now, even knowing how deliberate it must be. 

"I do contract with them," Luna said. Coolly. "Is that all you wanted to ask?"

"No. Who have you told about this--well, I know that was a Calabite you were talking to in the Marches, whatever she was pretending to you. You've clearly told the story to this kid here, but who else?"

"If you want to ask about someone in particular," Luna said, "just say so outright. It's easier than fishing around like this."

Sean studied her, and she studied him right back. No more pretense of smiles. (She missed the smiles. Even knowing. He was stunningly handsome when he smiled, and no less so for clearly being aware of that fact.) "There's this Seraph--"

"Penny," Luna said. "Of course. He cares about her too. I don't know if you care, or if she's just some--complication for one of your projects, and it sounds like you're not about to tell me. But I did tell him everything. He came down to speak with me when I was still an Impudite, because she sent him a message."

"I should have guessed," Sean said. He flicked a glance to the side, where Johannes met his gaze steadily. "Trade. It figures. What was the message?"

"None of your business," Luna said. "Why _do_ you care about her?"

"None of your business," Sean replied. He had pulled on some cheer again, as if he didn't care what anyone thought about what he said, but it didn't fit him right. As if he'd grabbed someone else's jacket, and now it was tight across the shoulders and too long at the sleeves. He stood up, fast and easy. "Thanks for the information, all the same. And the offer _is_ still good, about giving you some weapons training, if you're still willing to take it from me."

"Of course I am," Luna said, and she stood up in turn. She offered Johannes a hand up, since he was getting to his feet. The whole matter of not having wings anymore was still putting the Elohite a touch off-balance, in figuring out how he meant to move. "I do want to learn how to defend myself, and I have a badge to qualify for. When's a good time?"

"How about two hours from now?" Sean said. "I have a few things to take care of."

"Like interrogating Penny," Luna said.

Sean stared at her for a quiet moment. "Kid, you begin to worry me."

"Until I met that one particular demon," Luna said, meeting his stare with her own steady gaze, "I spent my entire life working for a Habbalite who would hurt me if--well, for any reason at all, but especially if I didn't figure out what she wanted before she had to ask for it. I don't know if you're not as good at being sneaky as you thought, or if you just didn't try very hard around me. Either way, of course you want to go talk to Penny, and we're coming along."

"Pretty sure I could beat you there," Sean said, "if it came down to a race."

"Probably," Luna said. "Pretty sure I could send him email from here that would get there before _you_ did, though. Want to test that?"

Johannes held up a tablet demonstratively, while saying nothing. Really, what needed to be said?

"Fine," Sean said. "But for the record, I think this is a bad idea, and we might need to kick you back out to talk about private matters."

"I'm willing to take that risk," Luna said, and took Johannes' hand. She smiled sweetly at Sean. "Do tell me if there's anything I need to pick up between now and the training session, so that I can send a reliever to get it for me while we're talking with Penny."

#

The first thing Sean said when the door to Penny's room opened was, "I think we ought to speak privately." Which did not surprise Luna, because of course he wanted to get out of earshot of the children. And if Penny had agreed, there would have been nothing to do but walk away. To not know what they were saying. Seraphim were good at simply not telling you what they didn't want you to know.

But the Seraph, peering down at all three of them--Seraphim were also good at looking down at people from all six eyes while their head towered up at the full height available to them--said, "I will certainly keep your opinions in mind," and then slid out of the doorway in a way that suggested all three of them ought to come in.

So they did.

Luna took the window seat that she liked so much, with the linen curtains there, and Johannes sat next to her. Which gave the two of them an audience sort of view of Sean and Penny, who had promptly retreated to opposite sides of the room to eye each other. The Seraph was winning at this particular competition of staring, both from having the home ground advantage and three times as many eyes. That shouldn't have helped--it never did with Kyriotates, that Luna had noticed--and yet it did. Maybe people called Seraphim the _Most_ Holy for more reasons than how inhuman they were.

When the glaring failed to resolve into speech, Luna decided they might need some help. "Sean was trying to be sneaky in asking me questions to find out about Leah," she said to Penny. "And then as soon as he found when I met her, he wanted to know if you knew. So do you know what this is about?"

"I could make an educated guess," said the Seraph. Penny was smaller than Riccarda, but arched up with his head nearly brushing the ceiling, wings half-spread about him, and not so much coiled as letting his body sway about him in wide curves, he seemed...larger. It was something about the space, and how he positioned himself within it.

"You didn't tell me," Sean said. He folded his arms across his (still quite nice) chest, and that was a proper _glare_ at the Seraph, if still not one that could match the six-eyed appraisal he was getting in return. "The both of you damn well _knew_ and you didn't tell me, you talked right around it. And, hey, joke's on me, I did not even catch it when she asked after the kid, because I thought she was asking after the _other_ kid she threw to angels back then."

Penny raised one wing fractionally, and lowered it again. Which barely even counted as a shrug.

"You fucking asshole," Sean said. "Why didn't you tell me? You think that wouldn't have _changed_ my tactics? I mean, what, did you believe I would use that against her, instead of taking that into account for what my options were? I don't expect you to send me data for free, but that--you should have told me."

"I believe," Penny said, a set of words which always meant something more than throat-clearing or sentence rhythm when deployed by a Seraph, "that you will use all information available to you as seems most useful for pursuing your goals. Which are often not identical to mine. Which are sometimes _incompatible_ with mine."

"She is throwing demons at Heaven. Deliberately." Sean unfolded his arms, and his hands curled up tight at his side. (Luna took Johannes' hand, and was glad when his fingers squeezed hers.) "You thought this wasn't some sort of, I don't know, mitigating factor? That I would look at that and think, hey, how can I fuck her over with that kind of data this time?"

"Would you?" Penny asked, and the rows feathers along the spines of his wings stiffened out, forming ridges there like delicate leather-brown spikes. "If it would be useful to your goals."

"I'm not the one playing her like a double agent," Sean snapped. "If I had _known_ , I would never have let her leave. Or I would have sent her out with someone tracking her back to her partner, so I could get that bastard out of the way and reel her in properly. Do you think no one is going to find out? Do you have any idea what they will do to her if they _find out_?"

"I am not playing her," Penny snapped, and when he said it his fangs flashed inside his mouth as he bit off the words. "She makes her own choices, whatever my opinions on the matter, as she always has."

"Yeah, I'll bet you--" And Sean stopped. "Is this the only one?"

Penny extended a wing out, and snapped it back in place. "You have no right to--"

"It's not," Sean said, and Luna could not tell if that was awe or horror in his voice. "She's done this before. Not even that thing with that idiot Sword Kyriotate, but something more recent. And--oh, hell, her partner _must_ know. With the way they're tangled together. You _idiot_."

"You don't understand," Penny snarled, and Luna...did not understand, she still didn't, but she knew the problem. That neither did he. That this _hurt_ , and Johannes' hand tightened in hers.

"No! I don't understand. I do not understand, Penny, how you could watch her do this and not drag her in, no matter what she says. Tie her up and toss her into a Tether basement with a good therapist. Maybe she'll be _unhappy_." Sean looked...ready to spit. If it this were Hell, and not the world of Heaven where the Pax Dei kept all in some type of peace, she would have thought he looked ready to start biting. Or shooting. "Unhappy, oh no, and we could all deal, because unhappy is not the same as dead."

"I am doing what I am able," Penny said. All his feathers were rising up now, a jagged series of delicate points that should not have looked dangerous, because they were only feathers, and yet. 

"You know," Sean said, with a bright and terrible artificial cheer, worse than the honest anger, "I asked her to give me an estimate on her own life expectancy. And her educated guess? Less than five years. I don't know how many demons she's sent your way, Penny, but it can't be many, because if she does that too often I'd give her a life expectancy measured in weeks. And that only because the Game doesn't believe in quick executions for crimes that unusual. I bet Valefor doesn't, either."

"I am doing what I am _able_ ," Penny repeated, and his eyes were terrifying.

"You're not. I have a fucking job to do, Penny, and I can't go hunting her down, but _you_ could set up a meeting. You've done that before. Call her in, drop a few Malakim on her partner, drag her off and talk sense into her before anyone catches up. You could."

"I could not," Penny said, "even if I thought that would help. I promised."

"Then eat the dissonance and do it anyway," Sean said. "Unless you care more about your own integrity than you do about her life."

"I believe," Johannes said, in a small and steady voice, "that I ought to. Sit down. More."

And Penny coiled down all in an instant, wings in and head low, to look at the Elohite who was sliding off the window seat to sit on the floor, hands pressed firmly to the ground. "My apologies, Power," he said. "I..." He glanced at Sean, then back to Johannes. "I am sorry. Wait here, and I'll be back in a moment."

The Seraph left his own room. Luna sat down on the floor beside Johannes, and put an arm over his shoulders.

"Sorry, kid," Sean said, and sighed. He ran a hand through his hair, and gave the two of them a wry smile. "Never felt anything like that before?"

"No," Johannes said. "Do you feel like that often?"

"More often than is probably good for my mental health," Sean said. He leaned back against the wall, and Luna saw that the feathers at the lower edges of his wings weren't exactly in perfect array either. "Congratulations, kids. You've been introduced to the wonderful world of angels in Heaven being at each other's throats. If this were on the corporeal, it might've turned even more exciting."

"You're not being fair," Luna said. "You know full well how much he wants her here. Even more than I do."

Sean turned his gaze on her, and she felt it more than before. The weight of how much older he was, and how much more he _knew_ that she did. (Even if there were some things, she was sure, that she knew and he did not.) "Wanting doesn't count for shit if it doesn't translate into action," he said. "Someone needs to beat the waffling out of that Calabite so that she makes a fucking decision and stops causing the rest of us these headaches."

"That won't work," Luna said.

Sean snorted. "You met her for, what, a few days? How would you know?"

"It's obvious," Luna said. "Why do you think she sent me here? It wasn't just to be _nice_ , even though I think she did care some. Since she knew what it was like to work for Althea. She needed to know what Heaven was like. We can't tell what it's like from the outside. Do you know how _scary_ you are, looking at you from the other side? If it's all--hurting, and being made to do things by people bigger than you, then she might as well stay in Hell. Where that happens anyway, but she knows how it works."

"She'd live longer here," Sean said. He was not terrifying, even if he was dangerous. He was one angel with a particular set of opinions based on the information he had, and they could disagree, and...that was all.

"People die," Luna said, "going through redemption. They made sure to warn me before I did. So that I could make the choice knowing that." She turned away from Sean, and hugged Johannes more fiercely than he probably needed. It was for herself as much as for him. Or maybe for someone who wasn't there at all.

Of course Johannes hugged her back, because in the ways that matter, he understood.

Penny walked back into the room, vessel form drawn around him like--she wasn't sure, exactly, if it was a shield against what his true form showed (even if she could still see that as well, if she looked for it), or a concession of sorts. To look more human in a room of people who were rather human-looking. It was a nice enough vessel, if a bit tall and skinny for her tastes. And he brought back a tray of coffee in disposable cups, the first of which he handed to Johannes. The second to her.

He gave the third to Sean without any comment at all, and retreated across the room again with his own.

Luna was not exactly sure what that meant in Trade terms. It wasn't something Vaina did. (But then, she'd never seen Vaina be angry at anyone, much less quieting back down afterward.) She leaned against Johannes, shoulder to shoulder, and drank her coffee. Sweet and milky and covered in foam, with a delightful bitter undertaste. Something for her to track down again later. Maybe there would be a badge involved.

Sean looked into his cup as if he expected it to bite him, and then shrugged, and drank his coffee too.

It was very quiet in Penny's room for a few minutes. So quiet that when a breeze caught the curtains and flicked them about, the snap of the fabric against itself carried through and hung in the air.

"I'm surprised you remembered how I like my coffee," Sean said, looking at his cup rather than at anyone else.

"It wasn't a complicated order," Penny replied.

"Yeah, guess not."

Luna wondered if she ought to say something. But Johannes didn't seem compelled to speak, and if anyone would know the right thing for her to do in strange circumstances, it would be him.

"Look," Sean said, setting his coffee aside on an end table, beside a potted bamboo. "You're going to deal with this your way, I'm dealing with it mine, and yelling about it won't change anything. If I do catch her again, I won't let her keep running. But I'll tell you. So you have a shot at talking her into something, because I don't think she wants to listen to me. And I don't have the time to go _hunting_. Fair enough?"

"I would appreciate being informed," Penny said, with delicate precision, and then a deep gulp of his drink.

"Just tell me," Sean said, "how many. Directly. I know there's one, so a _number_ can't give me any real ammunition against her I don't already have, right?"

Penny glanced over at Luna and Johannes, and she did not sit up straighter. But drank her coffee, and kept her arm about her friend.

"Two," the Seraph said.

"The other one recently, or before this kid?"

"Before."

Sean pulled on a rough kind of smile. "Well, if that hasn't caught up with her yet, maybe it won't. Thanks for the coffee." He lifted a hand in a wave, and turned for the door. "Catch up with me in an hour," he said to Luna, as he went. "Same place as last time. I'll show you how to put a bullet between someone's eyes. You might find it useful. Even this Seraph would agree."

#

Johannes accompanied her to the Grove, without her even needing to ask. At the edge of the trees, before they drew near enough to be stopped by anyone and asked their business, Luna stopped, and put a hand to his shoulder.

"Back in the office," she said. "Did you need to sit down because it hurt too much to feel what they were feeling, or because it was the best way to get them to stop arguing?"

"Yes," he said.

She hugged him tightly, spun him about in the air, and then broke away again. "You are," she said, "the very best Elohite. And I'm sorry about what that felt like, and I'm so glad you came along."

And she hurried away to meet up with that maddening, peculiar Mercurian, to learn how to shoot things.

#

Luna watched the light fall across the water overhead. And then, when she was bored of that, she rolled over to drift nearer to where her Cherub was working. His hands and feet were swift and sure with the tools, and the wood was taking form into the shapes that would hold glass between them. For the new place they were building together.

"Vaina," she said, and waited for him to pause, and look up. "Could I ask you a favor?"

"Certainly," he said.

She held out the card she had been given by Judgment.

"You don't need to talk to her," she said, "if you'd rather not. But I think it--I don't know if it would help. But it _might_. And we won't know if it would, or could, or might have, unless you try. If you're willing to try."

He took the card from her, and read the name there.

"I never knew her well," he said. "Though the name is...familiar."

"It might hurt," Luna said. She held out her hands. "Maybe worse than not doing anything. Even so. We should try. I can't do nothing, and this is all I can do."

Vaina took her hands. No smiles, and his eyes were saying that it _did_ hurt, even to think about. But he said, "I will talk to her, Luna, if it will make you happy."

"It would. Please."

It wasn't much. But she could do _something._


End file.
